Weekend Wrap

BarCraft Melbourne 25

The Melbourne StarCraft community descended on the Fringe once again for beer, pizza and eSports with pre-show entertainment thanks to the ACL Sydney stream. We had an awesome time watching Rain pick apart Byul in the GSL Final while giving out prizes to the punters thanks to Blizzard ANZ and Verve Energy Drink.

I think the loudest cheer at a the bar came when Tasteless and Artosis gave BarCraft Melbourne a shoutout on stream! Thanks guys!

Of course BarCraft Melbourne wouldn’t be the same without our world famous Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament. I am happy to say we have a new champion, with Ronald being knocked out in the early stages. The best of five final went to Caitlyn who took home the 2009 BlizzCon Raynor Noob and the cheers of the BarCraft crowd – well played!

This was our 25th BarCraft event and I am pretty confident this is the longest running event in Australia and quite possibly the world. We will be back for more BarCraft action for the finals of GSL Season 3, so please keep an ear out for announcements later in the year.

To mark our 25th event we have released BarCraft Melbourne t-shirts through Teespring. We run BarCraft Melbourne due to our passion for not only the game but to bring as many together to experience the wonder of eSports. With that in mind we’d love you to show your passion for BarCraft with one of our new shirts. A couple of examples are below:

We have plenty of events coming up this year, not just for StarCraft 2, so keep an ear out for events coming up for League of Legends, Dota 2 and Counter Strike!

ACL Sydney

Congratulations to our very own NXZ on a stellar performance at the StarCraft 2 tournament at ACL Sydney over the weekend. With limited preparation, Ryan was able to sweep through the open bracket to meet his kryptonite, Alopex, in the Upper Bracket final.

NXZ rallied again from the lower bracket to again meet Alopex, but could not get past him. Regardless he had already qualified for the Group Stages and selected Group A. Silicon Sports favourite, Kez, along with Frustration, Yours, Dark and of course Alopex were in the group and Ryan was able to go 4-1 in the group, dropping a series to Alopex once again.

The top eight consisted of seven Zerg players, NXZ, Alopex, KingKong, MightKiwi, Wally, Pox, Crimson & the only Protoss player left in the bracket, Chinese International, Pigeon. Ryan’s first opponent was former team mate, KingKong. After succumbing to a 9 pool in the first game NXZ rallied to take the series 2-1 and meet his nemesis once again. Alopex had his measure once again defeating NXZ 2-0 and sending him to the lower bracket.

NXZ quickly accounted for MightKiwi to set up a rematch with KingKong. This again proved to be another fantastic series which could have gone either way but the positioning and upgrade advantage NXZ had allowed him to take the series 2-1 once again.

NXZ would again meet Alopex in the lower bracket final for a shot at the ACL Sydney Grand Final. But this time he made sure he wasn’t going to leave anything in the bag this time. Ryan took the first game with style but Alopex evened it up leaving it all down to a best of one to see who would make the Grand Final against Pigeon. In the end NXZ had learned a lot in his games through out the weekend against Alopex and his Muta play in the final game proved pivotal.

Ryan’s signature fist pump was in full force when the ‘GG’ came up and was replicated by many, but mostly by rezyn8 at BarCraft Melbourne!

The final series of the tournament was upon us and Pigeon took a 1-0 lead for qualifying from the upper bracket into the match. NXZ evened the score with some impressive roach play in their first game. Pigeon soon had NXZ on the back foot with a heavy sentry/stalker play in their second game taking it to 2-1 in the Protoss’ favour.

The final game saw Pigeon take to a sneaky cannon rush at the natural which set NXZ back so far in economy that he just could not recover. Everything hinged on Ryan’s zergling/baneling bust but alas the defence from Pigeon was solid and NXZ had to tap out going down 3-1.

Despite the second place, it was a brilliant result for NXZ and will definitely motivate him to prepare for WCS Season 3 Challenger considering he has been concentrating on exams and had very limited preparation for this tournament.

Silicon Sports also had solid performances from Law in the group stages just missing out on the Championship bracket; Kez was able to take some notable scalps in his group as well.